Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Romania: the final frontier of the Latin world, the last Romance-speaking bastion in a Slavic sea. (Indeed, my title is now a complete misnomer, since this country is neither Yugoslavian nor even Slavic). Don’t expect it to be like France or Spain though; Romania’s western linguistic siblings are by no means indicative of the country’s culture. Instead, it is a rich and challenging country, often supremely beautiful, but still finding its feet after its troubled recent past. If there were an award for the 20^th century leader who most single-handedly destroyed his or her country, Romania’s communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu has to be a prime contender. More on him will follow in time to come.

Early on the 28^th of September, I crossed Central Europe’s greatest river, the Danube, at the bridge between the towns of Ruse and Giurgiu, en route from Bulgaria’s capital Sofia to its Romanian counterpart Bucharest. But this was my second visit to the country, having previously spent a couple of days in its north four months earlier. I thought I would reminisce about that trip while I waited for border control on the way to Bucharest.

A conveniently cancelled couple of lessons in mid-May gave me an opportunity to make it a fair way from the Czech Republic, and I made the arrangements to travel to Cluj-Napoca, in Romania’s northwest. There, I would spend two days with my friend and former colleague Mihaela, and meet her fiancé Adrian as well. To get there, I took a bus to Budapest, a route I have travelled a few times, and at 2330, connected with a minibus that would take me onwards. I was immediately impressed when I found that two of my fellow passengers spoke excellent English, and even more so that they both spoke French as well, and that one additionally spoke Hungarian. My own friend Mihaela speaks four languages. Perhaps it’s a generalisation but it struck me that at least some Romanians are very talented in the field of languages. The woman who knew Hungarian was one of a large number of Romanians with Hungarian ancestry, and there is a large crossover area in the north and west of Romania, where Hungarians in particular are found in large numbers. Where the eastern province of Moldavia and the southern region of Wallachia became independent from the Ottoman Empire in 1878, the northern and western portion of the country, Transylvania, was ceded from Hungary only in 1920. The woman in question revealed that she worked in Bratislava as a Romanian teacher to Slovakians, which seemed rather unusual. When I quizzed on the size of the market, she admitted that in truth, there is almost no call for it, but that she was a good teacher and the few students she has have managed to pick up her language relatively well. I suppose it’s proof that not just English speakers can make a living teaching abroad, but natives of much less widespread languages too.

It is clear from looking at the map that Hungary is geared towards the west. A smooth and well maintained motorway connects its capital to Bratislava and Vienna, and others I have not been on run to two of the former Yugoslav capitals, Zagreb and Belgrade, in the south. Towards Ukraine and Romania, though, the motorways just run out. My suspicion is that this was a deliberate design to hinder attempts to suppress the country by force from the USSR or through Romania, particularly in the wake of the Soviet invasion that quashed the anti-communist Hungarian Uprising of 1956. In any case, we weren’t even on the eastbound motorway that runs to Hungary’s second city Debrecen. Instead, I was trying to sleep while being bounced around on a poorly surfaced single-lane highway in the centre of the country, running towards the border city of Oradea. Needless to say, it wasn’t the best night’s sleep I can recall.

Early morning mist in northwest Romania 

We crossed the border at 0400 and leapt forward an hour, and by this stage the sun was beginning to appear in the northeast. Oradea came and went, though I had a few minutes to start familiarising myself with a new set of accented letters. Romanian pronunciation is generally very close to Italian, but uses the additional letters ș, ț, ă, â and î, the first three equivalent to English ‘sh’, ‘ts’ and ‘uh’, and the latter two representing a strange and unfamiliar sound rather like ‘eew’ but produced with unrounded lips and further back in the mouth.

By 0600, it was broad daylight and I was rather taken aback when, in the small town of Aleșd, I saw a pair of local farmers merrily riding along the main road in a horse-drawn cart. They were carrying their produce, possibly to a nearby market, and this was a scene that has played out countless times throughout Europe down the centuries. Motor vehicles have long since taken over in most of the continent, and yet here it was still apparently a normal sight. I went on to see several others during this first visit, and have since also come across them in Montenegro, Kosovo and Ukraine. The pattern of development suggests that Romania would benefit from being able to use tractors instead, but for me, the sheltered Western European, this was a real novelty and a charming remnant of the way life used to be.

Halfway between the Romanian border and Cluj, the road rose to summit a small pass over the Apuseni mountains, a detached sub-chain of the Carpathians. In the early morning mist, the virgin forests of the surrounding peaks were sublime. Unblemished woods covered the surface of all these mountains, without a hint of a ski trail, a string of electricity cables, or even a pasture, as would be expected in many ranges of Western Europe. It would have been tremendous to have stopped and explored this wilderness, but I had to continue to the city.

The Someșul Mic river

Approaching Cluj, the driver, who spoke only Romanian, declared that he would not be entering the city. This was relayed to me in English and to another passenger in Hungarian by the multilingual teacher, who added that the traffic was bad and the driver didn’t want to be charged some sort of tax for crossing beyond the city limits. Thus, after half an hour of crawling along on the one road that all the morning commuters from the west were relying upon to get into Cluj, we pulled up in the district of Mănăștur and were ejected from the bus.

Halfway between Budapest and Bucharest, Cluj is Romania’s second city, but it had a palpable feeling of being provincial. Yes, there is a small airport and a railway station, but it is otherwise very poorly connected, with effectively five roads approaching the city, only two of which connect in a semblance of a bypass around the outskirts. Thus, all regional traffic gets funnelled through the city centre, making my walk congested and smelly. There were buses too, and Romania has an extensive network of intercity minibuses, the most notable company being the smutty-sounding Fany. However, what was really needed in a city of 400,000 people was a light railway or a metro system, or even just a ring road; anything to relieve this relentless mass of stationary vehicles. This was the most immediately apparent problem of Romanian infrastructure, and whilst the country is working to build motorways and hasten nationwide travel, it still lags far behind most other European states. Subsequent travels showed that it is not always as bad as I experienced coming into Cluj, but this first experience was rather striking.

Stationary traffic in Cluj

The traffic was still busy in the city’s central square, Piața Unirii (meaning ‘Union Square’, lots of Romanian cities have a plaza by this name), where I met my friend Mihaela. She had travelled in from her home outside the city but was familiar with it having formerly been a student in Cluj. The city is known as the home of Romania’s largest university along with a number of other higher education establishments and is a significant student centre, as well as having been Europe’s youth capital in 2015. Mihaela and I caught up over a breakfast of poale-n brâu, traditional Moldavian sweet breads stuffed with soft cheese and sultanas. Fortunately, she took care of the ordering, thus avoiding me openly butchering her language in front of her.

There are three readily apparent things about spending money in Romania. Firstly, coins are so small and invaluable as to be almost unnecessary. This isn’t in itself unique; the same situation applies in Serbia and Macedonia, but it is noticeable how light one’s wallet is, particularly compared to its neighbour Hungary, which insists upon using very clunky and heavy coins. Secondly, when one does receive a coin, there is nothing interesting about it. Romanian coins are the most singularly dull I have come across, and this is speaking as someone who has used sixteen other currencies. They look like they were designed by someone whose inspiration was a child’s ‘my first supermarket’ play set, or perhaps an avid enthusiast of parking meter tokens. The 10 bani coin (£0.02), for example, is silver with on one side ‘10 bani’ in the most generic font imaginable, and on the other side, a small reproduction of the Romanian national crest, the word ‘Romania’ and the year of its minting. There is no hint of any charm, of any attempt to represent Romanian culture, a famous building, person or national symbol. Even a lion, after which the Romanian leu is named, would spice things up a little. Finally, and on a more satisfying note, the Romanian notes are a revelation. Currently the only European state using only polymer banknotes, Romania switched to plastic in 1999, a full 17 years before the UK released the first of its plastic money. This was a real curiosity to me, although now that the Winston Churchill fivers have come out, it is not so special. Unlike the coinage, the notes are colourful and characterful and full of the expected set of people, buildings and symbols representing Romania. What’s more, until 2020, when the £20 note is replaced and the far less commonly used £50 is potentially withdrawn from circulation, Romania will be the only country between Canada and the Far East to use only polymer notes.

The Romanian leu: polymer notes and the world's most boring coins

Parcul Central

The lake in Parcul Central

Cluj's casino

After our breakfast (and we did find more interesting topics to discuss than money), we had a stroll through Cluj’s Parcul Central (Central Park, if not already obvious) and there found Mihaela’s fiancé. Both being former or current history students, Adrian and I hit it off quite well and I appreciated what he was able to teach me about Romanian history. A good couple of hours was spent outside at the Ethnographic Museum of Transylvania (Muzeul Etnografic al Transilvaniei), an open air collection of traditional houses, churches, mills, barns, and other agricultural buildings, representing a mixture of styles from all over the Transylvanian region of Romania. The dwellings were generally small and cosy but must have been hard to live in during long and harsh winters. Many rural Romanians still reside in such cottages. I felt horrendously privileged; British peasant houses hadn’t looked much like this since the 1700s. The presentation was impressive very effort had been made to faithfully depict each building, complete with carved wooden furniture, homely cloth and ceramic decorations, and an assortment of tools and cooking utensils. Not all of the dozens of buildings on the site were open, but all those that were had cheery volunteer guides outside, calling over as we walked past to invite us in and ensure we didn’t miss their particular exhibit.

The Ethnographic Museum of Transylvania

A mill

The interior of one of the museum's houses

A large farmhouse with a vine-covered porch

A meadow at the museum. Crosses like the one shown are a common roadside feature of rural Transylvania

For much of the time, Adrian and I found ourselves together, as Mihaela was kindly devoting her time to translating the informational signs into French for the benefit of a couple of monolingual French speakers on holiday in the country. With both languages coming from the Latin family, Romanian is one of the closest tongues to French, but due to differences in grammar, the francophones would barely have extracted more from the Romanian texts than I would, and at least I had the benefit of the signs being in English too. (Example sentence: ‘The woman’s dog eats my bread’ is in French ‘le chien de la femme mange mon pain’, or literally ‘the dog of the woman eats my bread’. Pretty straightforward. Its Romanian equivalent is ‘câinele femeii mănâncă pâinea mea’, translated literally: ‘dog-the woman-of-the eats bread-the mine’. Clearly the vocabulary is very similar, and very different to English, but same cannot be said of the grammar).

The exhibition highlighted the diversity of Transylvania, with many of the houses representative of the region’s sizeable Hungarian and Saxon populations. Each group also brought a different religion to the region, with Romanians being predominantly Orthodox, Hungarians Catholic and Saxons Protestant. In addition, a further group of ethnic Hungarians from central Romania, called the Székelys, and smaller populations of Ukrainians and Jews, made this an incredibly diverse place historically, during its short period of Ottoman occupation and into its time as a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the latter years of this union, the Hungarians undertook a Magyarisation programme, and after the 1920 Treaty of Trianon handed this land to Romania, the new country challenged this diversity. The Second World War and the staunchly nationalist approach of the communist regime spelt the end of eight hundred years of history for the Transylvanian Saxons. Initially introduced to Transylvania in the 12^th century to defend the eastern frontier of Hungary – and Christendom – from Turkic peoples of Central Asia, the last of the Saxons disappeared back to Germany in the mid 20^th century.

A monument to political prisoners of the communist regime

The Transfiguration Cathedral (Cathedral Schimbarea la Față), Cluj's Greek Catholic cathedral

By now the sun was strong and the temperature was in the high 20s. After finishing at the museum, we headed back down the hill for a late lunch. Then Mihaela and Adrian led me on a tour of the city’s major sights, starting with St Michael’s Church (Biserica Sfântul Mihail) in Piața Unirii, an impressive gothic Catholic building. A little further on, in Piața Avram Iancu, is the 20^th century Romanian Orthodox Dormition of the Theotokos Cathedral (Catedrala Adormirea Maicii Domnului). At this stage, I had never before been to an Orthodox church before, so it was helpful having the two locals with me to explain some of its features. I am far from an expert; Christianity is extremely complex and I know almost nothing about the 1054 schism between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches. Still less do I know about the distinctions between the Russian, Greek, Romanian, Armenian and other Churches. What was noticeably different to the Catholic and Protestant churches I am used to was the absence of pews, the decorations on all surfaces and the extravagant iconostasis that separates the congregation from the altar in the sacred area to which only priests may go. In one sense, this makes such places of worship quite informal, as the faithful come and go throughout the day and even during services, which are normally only sung, whereas Western Christians have a greater expectation of sitting through lengthy services. On the other hand, there was a greater level of devotion among those I saw, as worshippers make elaborate displays of praying, repeatedly making the sign of the cross, and kissing the portraits of the church’s saints. All of this is to generalise based on a very limited experience, but one that I have since seen repeated in other Orthodox churches in Romania, other Balkan states, Ukraine, Latvia and Estonia. Romania is among the most religious states in Europe, and consistently tops surveys asking European citizens whether they believe in God.

A statue of King Matthias Corvinus outside St Michael's Church (Biserica Sfântul Mihail), Piața Unirii

The altar of the Catholic church

The Dormition of the Theotokos Cathedral (Catedrala Adormirea Maicii Domnului); the statue is of Avram Iancu, a Romanian lawyer and activist during Europe's 1848 revolutions, and the namesake of this square

The iconostasis

Icons of saints run up the walls of the nave

Detailed decoration over the main door

Opposite the Orthodox church is Teatrul Național, an elegant Hungarian-built neo-baroque building housing the city’s theatre and opera. Other references to Cluj’s Hungarian past are seen all over the city. Small numbers of people were speaking Hungarian and there was plenty of Hungarian presence at the city’s market we visited. In another part of the city is the Matthias Corvinus House, in which the man of that name, King of Hungary and Croatia from 1458 to 1490 and King of Bohemia from 1469 until 1490, was born in 1443. Matthias Corvinus is considered one of the greatest rulers in Hungary’s history and his statue stands in Piața Unirii, whilst a replica is inside Budapest’s Buda Castle.

Teatrul Național

Hungarian soap for sale in Cluj's market; I can't adequately describe the smell of testosterone-scented soap

The house in which King Matthias Corvinus was born in 1443

Of course, Transylvania being as diverse as it is, Hungarian history wouldn’t be all that was represented here. There are more statues of the Capitoline Wolf in Romania than in Italy. Cluj’s is on Bulevardul Eroilor, close to the central square, and was one of the original five given to Romania by the Italian government in 1921. The remaining four went to Bucharest, Timișoara, Târgu-Mureș and the present-day Moldovan capital Chișinău. The Capitoline Wolf is of course the distinctive symbol of Rome, the she-wolf suckling the infant brothers and future founders of the city, Romulus and Remus. Romania is, as already stated, a country that speaks a Latin language and purports to be the modern continuation of one of the Roman Empire’s eastern outposts. It is named after Rome and is decidedly non-Slavic like most of its neighbours. The wolf statue thus reflects the country’s Latin roots, and yet is at the heart of a perplexingly muddled national identity.

Cluj's Capitoline Wolf, donated by the Italians in 1921

For the Romanians don’t just claim the Romans as their progenitors, but also the Dacians, a tribe about whom little is known; they were possibly related to the Thracians, and fought a war to defend their kingdom from the campaign launched by the emperor Trajan. The only surviving contemporary source about the Dacian people is Trajan’s Column in Rome. Under Ceaușescu’s regime, both groups’ histories were appropriated for different purposes. The Latin connection was used to emphasise Romania’s glorious imperial past, its strength, unity and organisation. This city in particular was long called simply Cluj, but had its Roman name, Napoca, added as a suffix in 1974. By contrast, the tribal history was utilised when Ceaușescu wanted to emphasise the down to earth determination of plucky little Dacia, such as his will to defy certain aspects of the USSR’s control over communist Romania. Both peoples are almost certainly ancestral to modern Romanians. Most groups of people alive in Europe 2,000 years ago are likely ancestral to most Europeans. So the claim of dual Roman-Dacian origins is hardly false. However, this inconsistency is akin to the British justifying the excesses of the Empire through their Viking history of sailing and raiding, and simultaneously denying that history to emphasise their pacific, mistletoe-loving, mystic Celtic past the moment aggression is mentioned. On second thoughts, this sounds rather like something the British would do.

A pageant, part of the weekend's festivities, beside the city's mediæval walls

Roman soldiers and armour on display

A small event beside the city’s stretch of surviving mediæval wall featured performers dressed as Roman legionaries and Dacian soldiers, with information boards about both groups and their impact on Romania. The historical connection with these two peoples is clearly alive and well today. The big event of the evening was a concert in Piața Unirii, part of this weekend’s festival called Zilele Clujului, or Days of Cluj. A local band named Trupa Hara was the highlight that Mihaela recommended, and a fun and warm evening was spent outside in the dwindling summer light as the band performed a series of songs blending rock with traditional folk elements to an enormous and captivated crowd that filled the main square; a lovely, relaxing conclusion to my first day in Romania. The morning’s activity was to be a trip to the nearby town of Turda, where I was promised a former salt mine had been turned into something quite unusual. Romania had been brilliant so far, and I couldn’t wait for what was next.

Cluj's old streets at the end of my first day in Romania